Probing magnetic ordering in air stable iron-rich van der Waals minerals
Abstract
In the rapidly expanding field of two-dimensional materials, magnetic monolayers show great promise for the future applications in nanoelectronics, data storage, and sensing. The research in intrinsically magnetic two-dimensional materials mainly focuses on synthetic iodide and telluride based compounds, which inherently suffer from the lack of ambient stability. So far, naturally occurring layered magnetic materials have been vastly overlooked. These minerals offer a unique opportunity to explore air-stable complex layered systems with high concentration of local moment bearing ions. We demonstrate magnetic ordering in iron-rich two-dimensional phyllosilicates, focusing on mineral species of minnesotaite, annite, and biotite. These are naturally occurring van der Waals magnetic materials which integrate local moment baring ions of iron via magnesium/aluminium substitution in their octahedral sites. Due to self-inherent capping by silicate/aluminate tetrahedral groups, ultra-thin layers are air-stable. Chemical characterization, quantitative elemental analysis, and iron oxidation states were determined via Raman spectroscopy, wavelength disperse X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry measurements were performed to examine the magnetic ordering. These layered materials exhibit paramagnetic or superparamagnetic characteristics at room temperature. At low temperature ferrimagnetic or antiferromagnetic ordering occurs, with the critical ordering temperature of 38.7 K for minnesotaite, 36.1 K for annite, and 4.9 K for biotite. In-field magnetic force microscopy on iron bearing phyllosilicates confirmed the paramagnetic response at room temperature, present down to monolayers.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.06533,
title = {Probing magnetic ordering in air stable iron-rich van der Waals minerals},
author = {Muhammad Zubair Khan and Oleg E. Peil and Apoorva Sharma and Oleksandr Selyshchev and Sergio Valencia and Florian Kronast and Maik Zimmermann and Muhammad Awais Aslam and Johann G. Raith and Christian Teichert and Dietrich R. T. Zahn and Georgeta Salvan and Aleksandar Matković and Chair of Physics and Department Physics and Mechanics and Electrical engineering and Montanuniversität Leoben and 8700 and Leoben and Austria. and Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH and 8700 and Leoben and Austria. and Semiconductor Physics and Chemnitz University of Technology and D-09107 and Chemnitz and Germany. and Department of Spin and Topology in Quantum Materials and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and Albert-Einstein-Str. 15 and D-12489 and Berlin and Germany. and Chair of Resource Mineralogy and Montanuniversität Leoben and 8700 and Leoben and Austria. and Centre for Materials and Architecture and Integration of Nanomembranes and Chemnitz University of Technology and 09126 and Chemnitz and Germany},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.06533},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
19 pages, 6 figures